Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

A "Blue Moses" for Passover

Straight No Chaser is the place for jazz lovers (and those who will soon be jazz lovers) to enjoy podcasts with their favorite music and artists. Winner of the 2017 JazzTimes Readers' Poll for Best Podcast, your host Jeffrey Siegel will take you inside the world of jazz, from the new releases to the best festiva;s to remembrances of jazz legends.

I'm not sure the Passover seders
are ready to be dazzled by the electric jazz of Randy Weston, but
if the title fits, share it, and today we celebrate a
"Blue Moses".

Weston recorded this album for
Creed Taylor's CTI label in 1972, mixing electric funk jazz that
the label did so well with his sense of African rhythms and
instruments. And what a band - Weston on electric and acoustic
piano, Grover Washington Jr on sax, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Ron
Carter on bass, Billy Cobham on drums and Airto on percussion. All
arranged by Don Sebesy and engineered by the inimitable Rudy Van
Gelder.

What's it all mean?
Weston's liner notes for the album explain:

The title song, is adapted from the rhythms
and melodies of a religious song, "Sidi Mussa" (Arabic for
Moses), one of the spirits evoked
by an Islamic brotherhood of the Gnawa. (All the North African
rhythm patterns have a spiritual identity; each identity has its
own color - Sidi Mussa's color is blue.). There are a number of
these brotherhoods in North Africa; the Gnawa originated in West
Africa, and most of its members ore black. There are groups in Mali
and among the Hausa in northern Nigeria whose music, rhythms and
rituals are similar to those of the Gnawa in Morocco and Tunisia.
The music of the Gnawa, which is passed from generation to
generation without being written, is heard throughout Morocco. The
instruments used vary in different areas, but generally the Gnawa
use the gembri, a large box-shaped three-stringed instrument that
is held like a guitar and sounds somewhat like a stringed bass;
kakobars, large iron "castanets" held in the hands (which may be
the forerunner of the sock cymbal); various kinds of drums and
hand-clapping. (My son, Azzedin, learned the Gnawa rhythms he plays
on his drums by listening carefully to the
kakobars.)